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From the far horizons of the unknown come transcribed tales of new dimensions in time and space.
These are stories of the future.
Adventures in which you'll live in a million could be years on a thousand maybe worlds.
The National Broadcasting Company presents X minus one.
Tonight's story, Protective Mimicry by Algez Budris.
Frankly, I think I'll probably have to take my expense account clear up to the Central Galax Civil Service Board.
My friends tell me to forget it, but take it from me, a wrap in the credit book like this isn't easy to laugh off.
Not on a grade four civil service pay scale.
So I've made my beef out in quadruplicate and filed it.
Usually a special agent in United Galactic Federation's Department of the Treasury,
Investigations Division Currency Section, doesn't have much trouble with this window sheet.
But this, well this one's a corker.
To understand you got to know how they make the stuff.
The un-Galax men is in New Geneva on Canopus 3.
I remember I went around with the 40-Defsy credit tour when I first joined the staff.
The guide was a cute little brunette from one of the rim stars who was later fired following an annual pan-sauce office party.
I didn't pay much attention to her spiel.
She was dressed in the new neo-Minoan style, but I got the general idea.
This is a demonstration machine of course, but you will notice the indestructible fiber coming off that spool at the right.
It goes into the slot in the machine there.
Now if you'll pass along you see it goes between those two rollers through six or seven chemical baths.
No, I'm not sure what chemicals.
That's restricted information.
It's stamped, analyzed for flaws, dyed, and then run through this unit here.
This is the most carefully guarded part of the process.
The unit is removed from the plant each night and locked in the deep space vault on the satellite station directly overhead.
After the strip emerges here it is chopped into convenient lengths and carefully removed into armored cars.
It is called money.
What does that secret unit do?
Well that's a very good question.
You see the currency is non-defensible fireproof immune to wear weather and water,
but the most important thing is an electronic pattern impressed into the fiber by that secret pattern.
You all know when you cash a bill it is passed over an electronic plate that reads the pattern.
If the serial number and the pattern match, well, but if they don't,
well first I'll put an ordinary credit note over the beeper.
There.
Perfectly good.
Now a simulated counterfeit bill without the electronic pattern.
Well now that wouldn't fool anybody long, would it?
Could anybody duplicate that electronic pattern?
Well that's a very good question.
Only the government has the equipment to put that in.
Your currency is safe and sound.
Don't you worry about that.
Are there any more questions?
Yeah.
How about a drink after the tour?
Well that...
Oh.
That's a very good question.
It sure was.
So was the answer.
Well, getting back to money.
The engraving, the chemical composition of the ink and the fiber would be tough enough to duplicate,
but that electronic pattern snaps the clincher on it.
That's why Chief Inspector Saxguard of my division looked sourly at me when I came into his office
and spread a fistful of credit notes on his desk.
What's that?
What's it look like?
A handful of 50s. Why?
Put a couple of them over your beeper plate.
Okay.
They're perfectly okay. What's it all about?
Look at the serial numbers.
Three, four, five, six, five, six, seven, eight, M.
Look at the others.
Three, four, five, six, five...
What?
Let me see them.
Save your eyes. They're all the same.
Fourteen, fifty credit notes with identical serial numbers.
That's impossible.
And every one of them goes over a beeper plate, quiet as a sophomore climbing into a dormitory window after hours.
Formal sir, where did you get these?
They came into the New York clearing house from a branch on Denham 11.
The manager blew his top. He called us the minute he spotted them and sent them out to us.
How about the manager? Is he blabbing all over the bankers club about it?
I read the un-Gallic riot act to him. He'll keep it under his hat.
Good. At least we won't have any financial panics for a while.
Have you checked these through the lab?
Well, the ink and paper is government stock and they match government beepers.
The lab plates didn't squawk any more than yours did.
You could spend these anywhere as long as you only pass them one at a time.
Formal sir, you know since the beeper plate came in, we've been sitting on our tails in this department building up our pensions.
No, I wouldn't say that.
Neither would I outside this office. But you know darn well nobody can expect to counterfeit a bill and get away with it.
It's only because throughout the universe there's a certain percentage of people who will try anything once
and a corresponding percentage of per-blind idiots who will accept anything with engraving on it as money that we're here at all.
I've seen cigar coupons and crayon sketches come into this office.
I've seen premium office from household magazines, jet bus transfers, where some people would try to pick a Yale lock with a quarter pound of butter.
Now the only reason any queer can pass is because some goggle-eyed noodnik neglects to use his beeper plate.
But I worry. I worry. For 15 years I've sat in this stinking office and waited for somebody to invent a matter duplicator.
Well, it looks like you can stop worrying. Look at those bills. Identical to the whiskey stain in the corner.
All right, bumholzer, you call transportation and get out to Deneb 11 and find out if anybody in that neighborhood has a matter duplicator or if he hasn't what he has got.
I picked up the department shuttle to the satellite and made fair connections up to Deneb 11.
It's a four-day run on drive and I get free fall sick so I was glad to hit the port in glove,
which so helped me is the name of the only city on the place.
Deneb 11 is what we call in the department a mud ball.
It's a jungle world with an atmosphere like a swatch of Harris tweed.
I was smoking a cigarette when I got off the shuttle and the air I pulled in made the smoke taste like well-decayed leaf mold.
I was wringing wet two minutes after I left the air-conditioned port.
I noticed the local costume would get you arrested on any beach in the galaxy,
but it didn't matter since there's nothing titillating about pasty skin dripping with weary perspiration.
I checked in with the regional office and found the resident agent tinkering with his air conditioner.
Hi, bomb holster.
You know anything about the sealed power pack on this condenser?
Yeah, if you keep banging at it like that, you'll crack the seal on the atomic shielding and your posterity will thank you.
Three heads at a time.
Oh, I guess I better not fool with it.
Take off your pants and pull up a chair.
I don't mind if I do.
Is it always this humid?
Oh, no, in the hot season it's worse.
I'd send for a replacement part, but the fax line isn't too reliable.
The last time I sent for a sealed unit, they shipped back an overage sea lion.
Yeah, I know. I was on Polar Station on Ganymede when my heater element broke down.
I faxed for three feet of element and they shipped me back three fetal elephants.
Yeah.
Well, I suppose you're here about the queer bills, huh?
Yeah. Got any lines on it?
Well, my orders are to lay off and let the central office handle it. Be my guest.
Any ideas?
No. Where do you figure to start?
Well, this is the only city. I'll have to check it out.
Have you got a list of authorized beeper plants?
Somewhere. I'll see here.
Oh, look out!
Why?
There's a whittle fly on your arm.
Hey, how does a thing that size get through the filters?
Insects on denneb are tricky.
This one is a non-filterable virus in the larval stage and it blows up to this size.
Carve his initials in your arm if he gets a good bite.
That's why it's called a whittle fly.
The whittle fly was only one of the darlings that made the fair city of Glub a garden spot.
They had one cute little tyke called the laboratory beetle
because when he bit you, he typed your blood and followed you around for days getting refills.
I had one take a sample of me as I went out the door of the residency with a list of beeper plates
and he followed me from store to store while I checked every installation in the city.
The little devil would step up to the bar every once and again to take another shot of my hemoglobin.
I even tried ducking in a men's room as fast but he'd be waiting for me when I came out.
And I slogged through Glub for three days and then poured myself back into the residence office.
Did he come in?
Who?
The laboratory beetle.
No, they usually hang around in the hall and wait.
Sometimes when I've got a poker game going, you can see three or four of the little angels
buzzing around outside waiting like chauffeurs outside the opera.
Wow.
Draw a blank?
Well, I found seven defective beeper plates but nobody remembers any queer bills being passed.
You know, who checks serial numbers?
They must have come in one at a time.
And the clerks at the bank always were out to lunch and referred me to the next guy.
Hey, got any lotion for insect bites?
Desk drawer.
In a way, the beeper plates make it tougher.
Nobody even looks at the bills anymore.
Just throw them over the plate and if no bells ring, it's okay.
Well, how about the other angle?
Matter duplicator?
I checked invoices and purchase records.
Nobody's been buying electronic parts that can't account for every tube.
I thought I had something.
One fellow bought 12 of those giant lithium cathode tubes, but it turned out his wife
was having them wired as lamp bases.
Well, I better be going.
I hate to keep my little insect friend out there in suspensions to cocktail time.
You got another lead?
Yeah, I found a bar that makes a Tom Collins with real lemon juice instead of battery acid.
I managed to duck my lab beetle in a revolving door.
He went around twice and shot out into the street.
So I settled down at a table at the bar and tried to make believe that I couldn't taste
the Den of Eleven atmosphere in my Tom Collins.
I was chewing on an ice cube when I looked up.
Mr. Baumholzer?
That's right.
I want to talk to you about money.
He was a terrestrial, but he'd been on Denim a long time because he was wearing the native
garment about the size of a five pound sugar sack.
His hair, which was potato field gray, was arranged in the old fashioned Presley style.
You know, the ancient long sideburns, duck's tail in the rear, the vice presidents wear
in family style bangs.
His ears had little bits of bone stuck in them and his eyebrows wandered all over his
face and he stood about six foot eight.
I waited him out and presently he spoke up again.
You were the same Mr. Baumholzer who's been going around asking all those questions about
duplicate un-Galic notes?
That's right.
Can I help you Mr.
Munger, to a decimus munger.
This bit's fair to be fascinating.
I was under the impression that my mission here was just a wee bit on the secret side.
There are no secrets in glove.
I want you to pull up a chair Mr. Munger.
I'm afraid I haven't time.
Well join me in a drink.
Are you really the Mr. Baumholzer that's working on this case for the treasury department?
Yeah, sure.
You're not the fellow that's turning out these duplicates are you?
Well as a matter of fact I am.
What?
And don't move.
This is a power thirty mistral coagulator I have.
Look out with that thing.
You've got it pointed at my head.
Yes.
I've got it set on high charge.
It will fuse your brain solid.
What else is new?
Now Mr. Baumholzer, stay right behind that table.
Now let's not make any rash decisions now.
I can't very well see how I could let you live.
Come on.
Try.
All right now drop the gun.
I'm afraid we'll be collecting a crowd.
Give me that.
Don't try to pick it up.
I won't.
I had something completely different in mind.
Just like in those ancient legends the archaeologists keep digging up the ones with the hard boiled
detective and the beautiful blonde I felt the traditional roof fall in on the back of
my head.
As I went black I remember thinking how odd it was that it was happening to me some five
hundred years after Spelane the Scrivener.
I came to in the same archaic fashion with my head going around in a free orbit around
my neck.
Mr. Baumholzer, are you all right?
I can't see.
I'm blind.
Everything's black.
Open your eyes.
Oh, where is he?
Who?
The guy who slugged me.
What am I doing back at your office?
Oh, some bartender brought you in.
I thought you passed out from too much lemon juice.
It was a guy named Munger.
Which way did he go?
Beats me.
Munger?
Hmm.
Tall feller in native dress?
Yeah.
Oh well, you might as well forget about it.
Why?
Well I can order a pick up on him.
Next time he's in town they'll sock him away in a psycho ward for a while.
Forget it.
I've seen an old lady calling up complaining that the nasty delinquents are teasing my cats.
That Munger's tied in with the queer.
Him?
He said he was the passer.
Well that can't be.
Munger, Munger, Munger, Munger.
You got a file on him?
Yeah.
I get a number of complaints on him.
So do the local cops.
He's, well, I didn't want to make trouble.
He's a very wealthy man.
I'll bet.
What does he do?
Well he's a merchant or something in a native village.
Once or twice a year he comes out and paints the town, but a counterfeiter?
I would like to talk to him again with the mistral in my hand.
He had a mistral?
Well that's a violation of a municipal ordinance.
You're supposed to check him at the quarantine gate.
Look I'm not investigating parking tickets and violations of the anti-noise laws.
This is a counterfeiting case.
Now do you know where I can find him?
Well he's probably gone back to his village.
Where's that?
Out in the jungle.
All right.
Get out your rubbers friend.
We're going out after him.
Suppose you fill your bathtub full of mud, build a fire under it, turn on the shower
and crawl in and wallow a little.
Do that and you've got a fair idea of the Dunnebian jungle.
I went out with Hall, the resident agent, and we started off.
Stick close bomb halter.
Visibility is about ten feet.
I'll eat everything I can see within ten feet.
Ow!
What happened?
I walked into a tree.
Help me up out of the mud.
We puddled on for a couple of hours.
The rain was so thick I didn't see the trees until I bounced off of them and sat down in
the warm mud.
I reflected as I struggled on my feet what a terrible waste.
In the beauty salons of Charles of the Ritz Asteroid, ladies from all over the galaxy paid
thousands of credits for hot mud baths to take the wrinkles out and make their skin
smooth and caressable.
And here was I getting a much more thorough treatment every time I sat down.
They issue a lot of special equipment from department stores and it all functioned perfectly.
My neo latex galoshes were fine but stuck in the mud.
My menopower goggles and wipers kept my eyes clear but they didn't keep me from crashing
into every tree.
My leak-proof sportsman's flashlight stayed dry as a bone but powerful as it was it couldn't
light up more than three feet in the pelting rain.
Hall, the resident, led the way, consulting a compass and a waterproof map and finally
we stopped and I noticed that there wasn't any rain coming down on me.
It's a rain shelter.
The natives built them.
Kind of.
Well they're on all the trails.
If you go more than a day in the rain you go punchy from water drumming on your hat.
I believe it.
Well now don't sit down, you'll sink in.
I don't know, theoretically a broader base should keep you from sinking like snowshoes.
Well also increases the suction.
I'll stand.
How far is Mongers Village?
Well either two miles or twenty-two.
I can't read the map very well.
Hey wait a minute.
Listen.
Well that's the rain.
No, no, no, you hear that squelching?
Somebody's coming.
Oh yeah, yeah.
From over there.
Natives?
Maybe.
There he comes.
We've got first pick on the shellards, a native tradition.
First come, first dry.
Yeah, there's somebody out there all right.
Who's there?
Who is it?
A friend of mine, Mr. Baumholzer.
All right, Monger, where did you come from?
Don't move.
I have several friends pointing long spears at your kidney.
Shall we go gentlemen, back to my village?
I believe you were looking for it.
Monger was so intent on me that he didn't seem to notice as Hall sidled off into the
darkness and when he did he set up a desperate cackle.
He had a few of his fraternity brothers chase down the trail with spears waving wildly but
they came back murmuring some kind of a chalk talk which seemed to carry the implication
that Hall had gotten away like a big bottom turtle.
Well, Mr. Baumholzer, your companion's action has saved your life for a while.
Yeah, he'll bring back a platoon of Marines and they'll reduce that village to a bullion
cube.
We'll just have to hold you as a hostage in case help should arrive.
Thanks.
At any rate, shall we get back to the village?
He had about ten natives with him, each one about seven foot tall with those big flat feet
that evolved on Denham for walking in primordial ooze.
They were dressed in the standard native loin cloth with matching accessories, namely ten
foot spears.
When as we started out along the trail I got a good look at Monger's loin cloth, it was
composed of tastefully arranged thousand credit notes.
By the time we got back to the village the rain had stopped.
The humidity, of course, was still 120 percent and the only difference was that the moisture
just loitered around rather than actually falling.
There was some kind of a clam bake going on in the village.
The natives were pounding a couple of drums and as far as I could see getting rapidly
stinko on some kind of jungle juice that they passed around in huge gourds.
They were leaping and dancing and as far as I could tell doing snappy sayings and fancy
patter as I sat on some kind of a low mushroom and tried to ignore the two spears that were
pressed against my throat.
It felt as if a nervous barber was trying to shave me with his razor tied on the end
of a ten foot pole.
After a bit Monger strode up to me with all the dignity of the lord of the jungle and
he waved the spears a foot away, pulled up a mushroom and sat down.
Actually you know that wasn't a native rhythm at all.
The original Denebian music is a kind of quiet flute-like melody, something like Mozart.
That didn't sound very flute-like.
Yes I know.
One of the first terrestrial anthropologists out here to study the Denebs took recordings
of their music and then to be polite he played them in a few recordings that he'd made on
an earlier field trip.
Unfortunately they were from that lost rocket colony on Ceres.
The music was a degenerate ancient form called I believe Roland Rock.
The Denebs liked it and they've been doing it ever since.
What's the party?
They're propitiating the tree.
I don't know why.
It's never failed yet.
But they're very conservative.
They've got to go into this act every night before I can do my stuff.
Lasts all night.
Want a drink?
No, no thanks.
Oh I wish I had a fifth of something civilized.
I've been drinking this native swamp water for much too long.
He was right.
They kept it up all night and I sat trying to figure out in which hut Munger kept his
machinery to make those duplicate bills.
Unfortunately the weak light that passes for dawn on Deneb came up and the natives quit
hollering.
Let's go Bonald sir.
I hate to keep a man's suspense.
You're curious about those duplicate bills.
Well now you're going to find out how it's done.
Well it's good of you to show me.
I suppose your theory is that I'll never live to tell about it.
That's very sensible of you.
I like a man who can face facts.
We walked across the mud square to the base of a tremendous tree which I gathered was
the guest of honor for last night's chivalry.
I still couldn't see the connection but I was willing to wait.
The natives sat around in a deathly hush and Munger and I stepped forward.
Notice nothing up my sleeves.
As a matter of fact no sleeves.
Not much arm either.
Now I take this 50 credit note.
Care to examine it?
Oh I've seen it in 14 others like it.
Yes I only use a thousand credit bill when the natives need new loin cloths.
These 50s are a lot easier to dispose of.
Oh I don't know I traced them to you.
But that was a mistake.
One of my contacts got a little greedy, spent too many bills in one place.
All right now I used to have the natives make a loud noise but I'll use your gun instead
here.
You see I take this bill, fold it so and so and so.
And there.
What are you making a paper plane for?
Just watch.
I raise the note in one hand, I aim at the tree and I fire your gun up in the air like
this.
As he let fly with my gun, Munger sailed the paper airplane straight at the tree and
it sailed right into the foliage.
Now watch.
The bill came sailing back out of the leaves and right behind it came another one.
And then the air was filled with paper planes.
Squadrons, wings, armadas of paper airplanes, each one made up of a folded 50 credit note.
They sailed out over the whole village and Munger set the natives to collecting them
and bringing them back.
There you are.
There'll be several thousands of them.
Look, look, look, look, look, look, look.
Genuine.
Absolutely genuine.
And I suppose they'd go over a beeper plate without a tinkle.
Startling isn't it?
Protective mimicry.
Yes, yes precisely.
You know I discovered this tree six years ago while I was attempting to evade the clutches
of the law on a confidence ramp.
I swung an axe at it to blaze a trail and 50 axes came bouncing back at me.
Well I never heard of any plant developing mimicry to this extent.
I know some plants and animals assume dangerous life forms as a camouflage, but this.
Well I'm not a botanist.
All I know is that you scare the tree with a loud noise.
You throw something at it and it duplicates what it thinks is the danger.
Well speaking of danger doesn't look as if your colleague is bringing any help.
Oh I'll miss your company.
Interesting you'll be shot with your own gun.
Now look monger.
Don't wriggle.
I hate a moving target.
What is that?
Looks like the cops monger at the edge of the village.
Homehoster, where are you?
We outnumber them.
Oh lay your hands.
I'll get you anyway.
No, no.
You can't run away from me.
I'll shoot.
I'll shoot.
I broke for the other side of the square and just as he shot at me I tripped over a pond
and went flying smack into the tree.
Well that's about it.
Here we sit in the spaceport on Dennerbeleven and I'm darned if I'll pay our transportation
back until I hear that the office is going to okay my expense account.
Monger?
Oh he's in jail at New Alcatraz.
Once he missed the shot at me it was all over.
After I fell into the tree he didn't stand a chance against us.
That's right.
Us.
All 168 of me.
Right Ed?
Right right right right right right right right right right right right right right
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Tonight by transcription, X minus one has brought you protective mimicry
written by Alges Burgis and adapted for radio by Ernest Cano.
Featured in tonight's cast were Mandel Cremer, Terry Keen,
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